


The Best Laid Plans of Trout and Trolls

by Yukari (M_Peaches)



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Action, Deceit, Gen, attempted espionage, betrayal played lightly, royal overthrowing, wholesale slaughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:06:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Peaches/pseuds/Yukari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dersite throne may not’ve been made for her, but she was Meenah goddamn Peixes and her ass belonged in a royal seat—too bad the problem with fantasy was that it often failed to mesh neatly with reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Laid Plans of Trout and Trolls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neigedens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neigedens/gifts).



> obligatory Google translate link http://translate.google.com/
> 
> warnings for coarse, sexist language, and racist uncomfortableness as part and parcel of anything to do with Damara

She had two orders of business to take care of—the first being to take down the Black Queen, as per her plot with Noir. The second, to take care of the agents who were next in line to take the Queen’s office in the event that she was ousted and/or offed. Old Jack wouldn’t be particularly happy about that, but he, treasonous little scamp that he was, was sitting in a Dersite cell right now—what was he going to do about it? Of course, there was also the Dignitary, the Brute, and the Droll to deal with, so that actually made four orders of business out of one, and five total. But that was picking nits. The agents were small fry; she could have offed them in her sleep. She would rather be awake for it, though, all things considered. It was high time she put her stifled royal ambition and murderous impulses to good use. The Dersite throne may not’ve been made for her, but she was Meenah goddamn Peixes and her ass belonged in a royal seat.

Five orders of business… _make that six_ , she thought, stretching her wings, massaging her throbbing temples, and revising her itinerary. New item one: work this headache off.

She stumbled from the smoking wreckage of her quest cocoon. She was pretty sure that not all ascensions were supposed to be so goddamned explosive, but then, not all deaths were typically that explosive, either. Hell—when she thought about it—she wouldn’t have put it past the deranged ho to have rigged the cocoon to blow, somehow. That was how she rolled; she wouldn’t’ve known subtlety if it hopped up and bit her on the throbbing, bulge-starved seedflap. It was kind of charming in its way. Hell, she turned back and looked at the smoldering ruin with a measure of pride bubbling up in her pump biscuit—a very, very small measure, mind you, tempered with righteous indignation that the broad had the audacity to lay her paws on her, and mostly dumbfounded astonishment that she’d managed to murder her at all.

She didn’t linger on those thoughts long. She sat back, staring up at the blue dome of Skaia that ensconced her and the rest of the battlefield. It was quiet, peaceful—dull beyond measure. She was a Derse dreamer, never cared much for Skaia’s prophecies. But she had agreed to rendezvous with the dumb broad—er, the _other_ dumb broad—the one she _liked_ , not the one she hated—here, and had nothing to kill (such a tragedy!) but time and a couple of bumbling, chitinous NPCs.

The dumb broad she liked didn’t keep her waiting very long, though longer than she would have liked, which was not at all; Meenah could watch her descent from Prospit’s moon from far away, like a meteor in slow motion and with less gory an impact. Predictably she turned up her sniff nub at all the bright blood and carapace bits now staining the ground and Meenah’s brand new (albeit uggo) duds. “I can’t leave you alone for half an hour without you making a nasty mess of things?”

“No,” Meenah informed her, “no you can’t. We had a deal an’ you gave me the short shrift.”

“I was _ten minutes_ late,” Aranea said.

“You was ten caracrustacean sons of beaches late.”

She coughed, and tapped her red-pajama-slippered toes uneasily against the ground. “That is very clear now. I hope you’ll have the good grace to _forgive_ me for _struggling_ to get a wink of shut-eye after that delightfully _gory_ spectacle I was treated to on your planet.”

Meenah let her babble on. “Sides. It’s target practice for when I take out whatsernook and her goons for reel.” She jabbed her 2x3dent in the air demonstratively. Good ol’ 2x3dent. She wouldn’t part with it on pain of her life.

“I should think that all that effort and stamina would be better saved for your actual—” Belated realization spilled down the poor girl’s face like freshly cracked egg. “What do you mean, ‘her goons’?”

Meenah snorted. “You’s an empath. You know what I mean.”

“Yes, and that was _never_ part of the plan.” Aranea huffed. “Meenah, this is much too dangerous for the likes of you! You can’t double cross Jack like that, it’s just—”

“I can double cross _whom_ ever the shell I want.” She threw in that extra M, just to seem extra serious, really impress upon Aranea how seriously serious she was being. “You gonna say no to a immortal god?”

“It isn’t proper!” Poor girl was really fuming now. “It’s card-carrying villainy! It’s _unjust_ , and maybe we oughtn’t have gone to all the effort of insuring your life this way if you were just going to waste it the moment you were given it.”

“To be fair,” Meenah said, “this wasn’t never reely so much in the way of ‘inshoreance’ so much as a happy cod-incidence on account of getting ambushed out of nowhere by a whack shitpanned time travelin’ ho.”

“What can I say, I am quite keen at planning on the fly.” Aranea was doing the toe-tapping thing again. “If you weren’t paying attention that was a subtle on fishing terminology.”

Meenah smirked. “You sly git.”

“Unlike you,” she went on, “who are apparently incapable of playing fair _or_ not acting on impulse, not to mention clinically unhinged!”

“Is you kidding? This was my plan from the start.” She hefted her 2x3dent again, too close to Aranea, who jumped back and yelped. “For all you’s a mind reader you shore is good at not payin’ attention to shit.”

She visibly bristled. “So you admit you’re a mere megalomaniac.”

“We all know you’s into that shit.”

A conspicuous delay. “No,” she said. “Not outside the realm of fiction.”

“This is a video game, ain’t it? Basically just like your fan fishtions.”

“No,” Aranea said with a sniff, “it is not at all the same thing, and you are not doing much in the regard of convincing me of your stability and the soundness of your alleged ‘plan.’”

Meenah _tsk_ ed softly, shaking her head. “‘Alleged.’ Wish you’d give me more craydit.”

Aranea’s spider-like, dainty fingers massaged her temples. “First of all, you’re really starting to reach for puns. Second of all I call it alleged because—” She furrowed her brow, a gesture that always appeared when she was trying to sift through her friends’ thoughts with more clarity. “—because your plan appears to be, in your own wording, ‘get in there and krill everyone.’”

“The prawnblem with that?”

“God damn it!”

Poor girl was visibly fuming now, flushing bluer than Neptune’s choice booty. It was kinda cute. Meenah took her by the shoulders and shushed her. “Simmer those rumble spheres of yours. I can swing it.”

“I think that I am entitled to be worried about you, Meenah,” she said.

“No one said you wasn’t.”

“I think I am also entitled to be worried about the stability of our _session_ should you annihilate not only the Queen, but her agents—”

“Nice to know where I rank among your priorities.” She decided that shoulder pap was now officially revoked and drew back her hand. “I’mma be blunt with you—I don’t give a clam. What the fuck kind of shoddy, inconsistent worldbuildin’ puts a bunch of dudes in charge on the home front after the queen’s offed. If it made any sense, the throne oughta go to the broad what offed her—”

“It makes perfect sense if you would merely consider the rich history of the Dersite royal line—”

“Don’t bullfish me, it ain’t even proper chess moves.”

She had wondered how long it would take for Aranea to have it up to here, and that was apparently it. She stamped her foot—actually stamped her foot; Meenah didn’t even know that was a thing people still did—and groaned. “Just don’t _die_ , for God’s sake. Surely you’ll forgive me if I want to forswear any involvement with this revised escapade of yours, even if I hope you have the presence of mind to try to make it through in one piece.”

“Nah,” she said to the very lovely view of Aranea’s retreating back. “I was about to offer you the chance to be my right hand, though.”

That stopped her. “… You were?”

“Shore. I mean, why naut? Queen’s gotta have a right hand.”

Aranea’s shoulders quivered as the seductive offer warred with common sense in her thinkpan. Meenah reveled in the sight.

“I’d consider it an _honor_ ,” she added in her proper-est, most dulcet tones, reveling in the shudder that crept up Aranea’s spinal column.

The girl’s shaking reached its zenith and broke. “… Can I have a while to mull the offer over?”

“Only ‘cause I’m eeling generous. Lemme know if an’ when you decide to take me up on that shit. I’m outy till then.” If Aranea had any last remarks to get in—and she always did, she wouldn’t be Aranea if she didn’t have to run her yap perpetually—Meenah paid them no heed in the least—as she always did. Her brand-spanking new, glimmering wings unfurled; they felt unfamiliar on her back, yet somehow she had barely to think about them to will them to move. It was as fluidly natural as swimming, or spearing bumbling carapacians through the skull; she didn’t even notice when her feet left the ground.

She breathed in the warm air of Skaia, which expanded above her ripe with promise and the dreamy, wispy visions of impending carnage. For once, she found she concurred with its assessments, but either way did not care to linger long.

Her wings flexed. _PC)(OOO!_

♣

The darkened streets were less open and lively than the battlefield, not that Meenah minded. Quite the contrary; she felt at home, more in her element than ever, skulking through the tiny planet’s alleys and corridors. Granted, it was not a “skulk” so much as a shameless, boisterous swagger. What business had a would-be queen skulking? Why, it went contrary to her very nature. She was drawing a lot of odd looks, but…

 _Crunch!_ —the business end of her 2x3dent got itself acquainted a chubby bastard’s body cavity. The carapacians didn’t even seem to give a shit. This wasn’t like Prospit, where mere jaywalking or littering would bring the swift hand of the authorities down on you, and if you didn’t have the presence of mind to run the guards would quickly subdue and sentence you to a brief stint of community service and a fine. You could drive an eighteen-wheel autocarriage through the streets and deliberately mow down hapless pedestrians and the authorities would not give half of a fuck—she had to admit she admired the style. You had to do something really fucked up in order to catch someone’s attention… for instance, attempting to assassinate the Queen.

 _Shnck_ —the _other_ business end of her 2x3dent turned a guy’s throat into a meat-grinder mess with a quick jab and twirl of the wrist. In a shocking twist, nobody cared. The gory fantasy of leaving a trail of blood all the way to the Dersite throne, making her ascension known with style, occurred to her. She was approaching the outer towers of the Dersite citadel now, and realized that would not be feasible; there were guards posted at every entrance, and they were among the few who would definitely care about the mess. Besides, looking like a literally bloody wreck was not on her itinerary—even if that part of her agenda was a bit screwed in the first place thanks to whoever thought taupe was a good color for this shit-tacular getup.

She fluttered up and slunk along the outer wall’s parapets, swinging from spire to ornate spire. The gleaming ivory dodecagon of prototyped orbs that hung like a halo above cast a dim version of her shadow long and far over the city, but there were no carapacians who would recognize it for what it was (dense motherfuckers that they were). She leaned out far, observing the windows below and the shadows from within that would pass them by. For once, stealth was of the essence, though Meenah was never skilled in that art. When she stopped by what appeared to be an empty chamber, she took that as her cue to swoop in and proceed. Her point of ingress was a chamber with little in it but someone’s desk, piled up with paperwork, and a collection of prim, completely identical suits tucked away on a rack in a corner. She contemplated swapping out her duds, decided against it, and then nicked a suit anyway in the interest of pawning it later.

The office door was locked from inside; when she slipped out, she discovered, to her dismay, that she was not alone. A squat little figure was wandering through the halls—the Courtyard Droll, if she had to take a stab at it (and she intended to), since he wore a gaudy hat taller than the rest of his body.

He would have been easy enough to defeat under most circumstances. But she was on the agents’ home turf now, and here all the tricky game mechanics came into play. The guards, the agents and the royalty alike all had their own health bars and special fraymotifs and shit. It occurred to her that she wished she had done her homework—or at least cheated off Aranea’s homework—before embarking on this mission. She only knew what she had learned from Jack. This was a vague, faltering description of how essential it was to know the weak spot and strike to kill, followed up by one of his many “demonstrations” of stabbing techniques.

Ah, Jack. One of the few folks in this Codawful, static, waste-of-time game to whom she could truly relate. It’d be a shame to kill him—but this was just the nature of politics. It wouldn’t do to let _him_ take the seat that rightfully belonged to _her_. He was Jack. He’d understand. And at any rate it wouldn’t matter when he was a bloody smear on the ground…

Fuck’s sake, here came the Droll. She hid away in an alcove, waiting for him to pass her by so that she could spring out and attack. From experience she had learned that ambushing your enemy would net you an attack bonus. His nervous, bare feet clattered against the marble tile. Never even saw her coming. His hat went flying across the floor. His squat little body felt surprisingly light as she smashed it to the ground, the end of her 2x3dent grinding into his back, her whole body coming down on top of him. It ought’ve killed him, in any other circumstance it would’ve, but he was still squirming like a madman. A thick skull was, for a few, a blessing over a curse—ah the more so given that its thick hind ridge completely covered the weak junction where the little carapacian’s head met his neck.

Meenah’s eyes narrowed. She would have to do this the hard way, then.

The little Droll made the most charming squeaky noises as she rammed the back of his head over and over with her weapon.

This was a time-honored strategy: wearing the boss away by degrees until its stamina was whittled down to nothing. It wasn’t glamorous, it certainly wasn’t fun, but what it did was get the job done. Fractures spilled the back of the Droll’s exo-skeletal cranial plate as she hacked tediously away at him, cringing at herself, at the sheer coarseness of it all, but knowing she had no other choice at the moment. When the Courtyard Droll’s plate shattered open and his thinkpan matter spilled out onto the floor, she sat up, her arms aching something fierce. She hoped deep down they wouldn’t all be this awful.

Now though, there were other questions to be contemplated. Like—might she take that garish hat for a trophy? Might she pawn it off somewhere? Who the hell would _buy_ it? It looked like cheap rubbish.

Wait. She smirked. What was she thinking? She was soon to be the goddamn queen; she could just pull a few strings, bully a few hapless shopkeeps and make the motherglubbers buy it. Yes, this was obviously the perfect, most well-thought-out solution. She wandered to where the hat now lay, all doubled over like someone about to be sick at the spectacle, sylladexed it, and, when she heard someone rounding the corner, de-sylladexed it in a panic.

Whale, shit.

Stealth was of the essence, dammit! The corpse was sitting out in the open. Wait, what if she hid under the hat? It wasn’t as if her swag could be compromised any more than it already had. It was a brilliant disguise. Without a moment’s hesitation (for she hadn’t a moment to spare) she pulled the stuffy hat over herself and hunkered down. She couldn’t see shit in here. Her horns poked out the top. Regardless, she supposed all she really had to do was stand around in her hat and act like an idiot and the blowffoons wouldn’t know any better.

There were two of them, from the sound of it, just random goons. They stopped in front of where she presumed the body lay. She would have liked to see the expression on their faces—alas. “Um.” She coughed, ratcheted her voice up a couple of octaves in a rough imitation of the dead squeaky bastard’s voice. “Just an unfortunate workplace accident. Nothing to see here, shellas, move along.”

She felt their beady little eyes on her. They stared at her for a long, long time.

“God dammit Droll not again.”

With that, they marched off. Presumably to go file an accident report but that gave her more than enough time to make like a wave and break for it. (Inwardly she cringed; even she had to admit that was pretty weak.) They passed through the door at the far end of the corridor, and uttered sudden, conspicuous gurgling sounds. She paid them no mind as she shucked the now stretched, poked, and thoroughly deformed garish hat. Good ol’ hat. She would carry it with her always as a memento of the time it had saved her life.

Oh who was she kidding, she would totally sell it.

♥

Mother of pearl, this was one leviathan castle. A motherfucker could get lost in it—and she was chagrined to admit she had. It occurred to her that she ought’ve taken Jack up on that tour offer awhile back…

She was busy playing over the encounter in her mind. Oh, the high drama—oh, the betrayal. She would march solemnly up to Jack’s cell; his characteristic misanthropic glare would melt and he’d gaze in shock at her as recognition dawned. He would know, from the start, that she wasn’t here to bust him out like a true ally would.

She’d thrust her trident through the bars, pinning him against the rear wall of the minuscule cell, prongs on either side of his neck restricting movement. He’d look at her, and spit: “Fuckin’ two timin’ turncoat broad.” She would say to him, “I hate to hafta do this.” And she would mean it. She’d liked him well enough. In another life, she thought, one where she didn’t have to build her reign from the ground up, she would have liked to have an archagent like him at her right hand. But as he was now, he was a competitor, not an asset. (Sides, she’d already offered that position to Aranea.) Therefore he had to go.

Then she’d heft her weapon, watch his face crack as he realized the end of his life was nigh, and then the prongs of her 2x3dent would sink deep into his soft belly, and do that over and over again, while he was defenseless in the confines of his cell; his red blood would bubble out in great gobs and paint the floor and he would watch his own blood gush from his body, his very life draining away—it was surely cheating, not to give him a fair fight, but ah, the visceral joy—

“Mother fuck!” She’d tripped.

First she tripped and cursed—then she ran, bolting behind the nearest pillar for cover. This place was built like one of the cavernous temples on her own planet—like a dungeon. The difference was this place wasn’t crawling with hostile enemies, at least not ones that would aggro her off the bat. Stealth remained ever of the essence. She peered out, waiting for the guards who’d been summoned by the sound to fuck off. As her eye swept the room, she realized what she’d tripped on.

“A chest,” she mouthed. How the fuck did she trip on a chest? Thing was like up to her knees; she must have really been zoning out. Nevertheless, she considered whatever its contents might be to be irrevocably hers as of now. Dungeon rules, of course. And the fact that she couldn’t keep her hands to herself.

The coast was clear now, so she wandered into the middle of the vaulted corridor where the chest sat. Who the fuck would put a chest there anyhow? Just in the middle of a fucking room, as if it had been magicked into place. Oh well. There were no locks on the chest (no one ever put any locks on any chests around this dump), and so she popped it open, and lifted out the coveted prize. God damn was this shit heavy. She turned it over in her hands, surveying—

This… was a mistake, right?

This was a head. A _very_ fat, _extremely_ heavy, stern-jawed, squinty-eyed, blood-smeared, gleaming, black, Dersite _head._

It wasn’t worth jack fuck. Not even on the Dersite black market, which would take most _anything_ except heads, which were commoner than dirt. She dropped it back in the chest, slamming the lid down tight, and disdainfully kicked the chest for good measure. That had the effect of rousing the attention of the Dersite guards who were out on duty, so she slipped back behind her pillar and slid back into full stealth mode.

When she looked down, she noticed smears of a dark red hue on her fingertips and wiped them clean on her pants. Not like she wasn’t already a mess beyond repair anyway.

♠

The problem with fantasy was that it often failed to mesh neatly with reality.

She found the dungeons mostly by luck. If it wasn’t blaringly clear before, it definitely was now, such that even she had to be aware of it— _someone_ had been here before her. By now, any attempt at stealth was an artifact. The dungeon corridor was a slaughterhive—there wasn’t an intact body to be found. Some had severed limbs—one particularly large fellow was void of a head (she now knew where that old chest’s contents had come from, she supposed)—most had distinct, deep stab wounds in their eyes. Her first thoughts went to Jack. She wondered if her pursuing him now hadn’t been rendered irrelevant—or futile. Indeed, when she rounded the bend and visited what she presumed to be his cell, she found that, though the cell door was shut and locked tight, it was empty.

She surveyed the scene with a disappointed eye. “Clam.” Barren as a mother grub’s corpse. Well, what the hell did she expect of a stab-happy established turncoat? Of course he’d have some plots of grandeur up his sleeve. Hadn’t she been a fucking idiot, expecting him to wait patiently there like a sitting fowlbeast. Trimming his claws with his knife or some shit. That was just absurd. Admittedly, she felt a little foolish—mostly she seethed. She felt carapace crunch under her heel and enjoyed the sound. She replayed it in her mind—only in this scenario, it was Jack’s fingers that splintered apart underfoot.

At the far end of the dungeon corridor was a staircase, as laden with gore as the rest of the dungeon leading upward. It led out of here, or so she assumed—she hadn’t noticed it there before, but it wasn’t like she was known for careful observation. And she couldn’t be blamed; this whole place was monochrome anyway. (Who came up with this shit?) When she approached, she saw a trail of bloody footprints leading up.

A chase, was it? _Shoald’ve figured._ An invitation to embrace the silver lining of this fiasco; a game, rather than a chore. She licked her lips. Jack was as good as dead. (Despite this, she bore him no deep ill will. After all, what was a little murderous intent beween friends?)

She bolted up the stairs, her feet pounding on the dark, brittle stone, her braids hanging and thwacking heavily at them as she ran. Flecks of stone broke away from the edges as her heels met them. The staircase seemed to go on forever, and though, as she ascended, she passed by windows revealing a lovely view of the outer wall, she saw nothing that would indicate.

She didn’t pay any heed to the way the crackling of stone under her feet gave way to a more conspicuous crunching and rattling, and the way the impact of her body seemed heavier and heavier—or maybe the stone itself seemed lighter and lighter—until she missed a step, and realized there was nothing after it.

Meenah looked up at the hole she’d left in the phony stairwell. She looked down, into the abyssal maw of the planetary core into which she now descended.

“Mother fuck,” she said for the second time today.

She flailed, weapon in hand; its tines caught on the chains that draped from the castle’s foundations. It was certainly a stroke of luck, or else she’d be a pretty fuchsia smear in the belly of the planet… It then reoccurred to her that she had wings, and that display of pitiful flailing was a waste of effort in the first place. She steamed. “Mother fuck.” She was really racking ‘em up today.

“Thanks fer pretty much summin’ up my exact sentiments.”

She looked up at the sound of the familiar voice. Jack looked, upon observation, to be in a bit of a mess. He was more tangled up than she was, though the more he tried to jerk himself loose, the closer he came to becoming carapace pizza far, far below. She unfurled her wings and fluttered up to him.

“Didn’t expect to run into you down here,” she said.

This was the part where, she assumed, Jack would have jabbed her if his hand weren’t twisted up in chains. “Likewise.”

“So water you doin’ down here?” She first looked up, at the vaulting, hole-punctured architecture above them, then down. “How’d you get here? Was it you what made that mess up there?”

“No.” His glossy white eyes narrowed.

She had every reason to refuse to take him at his word—every reason but the fact that he appeared to be in the same mess as her at the moment. For the moment, she filed it away under “truth,” tucked far enough back in that drawer that it may as well be irrelevant. Whether he lied or told the truth, she did intend to murder him in cold blood either way.

“You know who did?” Curiosity needled her, though she did not expect a straight answer.

“Fuck if I know.” The deepening of Jack’s frown offered exactly the answer she expected. “I don’t even fuckin’ know how I got ‘ere. Last I knew I was in my cell. It was like some kind of magic or some shit.”

“Magic my bass.” She smirked. “You sure you ain’t just been hittin’ the sauce?”

“Not in prison.” Venom filled the seams in his hard brow. Jack was never fond of her puns. “I’m _tellin’_ ya, I blinked an’ all of a sudden ‘ere I fuckin’ was.”

Concern flitted through her mind briefly—the unsettling enigma of a culprit unidentified. “Sounds serious.”

“Shut yer whore mouth I’m getting’ sick a yer shit. You ain’t clever.”

“The hell? That wasn’t even a pun.” Shewas never fond of his face, so they were essentially even. “If it’d been a pun I’d of enun- _sea_ -ated the _sea_. _Sea_ rious. _Sea_ what I’m doin’ here, Jack?”

“I said shut yer whore mouth.”

“Noted.” She couldn’t think of a pun for that one off the top of her head, unfortunately. “I could lend you a fin.”

His whole body started to vibrate agitatedly, like that of a tiny, hateful lap-woofbeast. “I swear I’ll shank ya in the jaw if y’don’t quit that shit.”

“Or I could let ya fall. Either option’s on the table.”

“Startin’ ta think that might be the more preferable option.”

She perked up. “Wait, reelly?” That made her job a hell of a lot easier than she had thought it would be.

Now he had begun to flail. “No. Not ‘reelly.’ Shut th’ fuck up an’ get me out of this mess.”

“Aight. Suit yourself.” It occurred to her that she might simply free him and then drop him.

But—there was always a _but_ —always, irreproachably, the obtrusive _but_ , all jutting-up and impudent-like. She remembered Aranea’s warning now, as fresh as if it’d just been spoken. Her life was only insured so long as she behaved within the narrow boundaries of _just_. Now, she considered “conscience” a thing for lowbloods and limp-bulged grubs, but even her very lax moral code would not actually permit _deceiving_ Jack. They were fronds. Sort of. She felt the same kind of grudging amity toward him she felt toward Aranea, mixed with more respect than the condescension she felt toward her.

That feeling bubbled up in her belly now. She hesitated. It wouldn’t do to kill Jack without his even knowing her intent to end his life. Had that suspicion even crossed his mind, she wondered? Why, it was just _low_.

“What’re you waitin’ fer?” He reached out, vainly trying to grab at her.

“Patience wouldn’t krill ya.” She scowled, extended her trident’s sharp tines toward him—could’ve gone for the kill then and there, but she offered them as a grip. “Don’t let go. If you let go you deserve whatever you get.”

He did not let go, no matter how hard she tugged, no matter how hard her wings flapped and the net of chains that draped around them like the walls of a labyrinth refused to give up their prize. He did not even let go when his leg twisted with a pretty rough-sounding crack. But he was stubborn. They had that in common.

When she had wrenched him loose, she observed the damage. His leg dangled, calf partly twisted, carapace shattered wide open to show off its inner meat. “Gross.” It was a neutral remark; she did not actually find it all that viscerally repulsive. She’d seen worse. She’d _done_ worse.

He was trying to claw his way up the smooth gold surface of her weapon, murderous intent flickering in his visage. Same as ever, in other words. “Save the smart remarks for when I can properly shank you for ‘em.”

“Shore thing, but you’re walkin’ yourself.” She ascended through the hole in the trick staircase through which she’d fallen, setting him on the steps below—busted leg and all.

Jack faltered, but got to his feet. “I can walk my own damn self.” And he did, with but a limp and a slight sideways lean to his step. (Hardy little bastard.) At least, for the first few steps—then he slipped, toppled again, and went face-first down the stairs she’d run up. He left blood and bloody teeth in his wake.

She could’ve warned him about stairs. (On the other hand, she could’ve used the warning herself.)

She scampered down after him. As the trick door closed behind her, sealing up something that was never meant to exist in the first place, she pondered how the hell to break the news to him that she planned to gut him alive.

♦

They were working their way through the upper floors of the Dersite castle now, making their way to the Queen’s throne—her objectives, for the moment, revised. Jack could wait until she had offed the Queen; it would be better, she reasoned, to have an ally in battle. The bodies up here were more sporadically placed, the gore less profuse, though the scene was still garish. Jack wore a grim scowl on his face—disappointed he had not gotten to them first, probubbly. She couldn’t blame him; murder was addictive, and she knew the look of a junkie when she saw one. He’d start twitching any second now.

The corridor leading to the Queen’s throne, however, was conspicuously barren. One would think there would at least be a couple of guards placed up here—but there was nary a soul to be seen. She turned, glanced at Jack, took a deep breath. “You know what’s up with this?”

“Why th’fuck do you think I _know_ shit, y’smartassed broad.” He brandished his knife at her. Her insides had gotten to know that blade quite well in the perigees she’d spent working alongside him. It rarely fazed her—now, she had not even reason flinch out of self-preservation. She did find her eyes tracking her shoes rather than his twitching visage.

“Just thought I’d ask.” She fell back a couple of paces behind him. For once now, he led her. Her fingers toyed with the hem of her shirt. She didn’t realize when she had stopped walking.

“… Ey, Jack.” She made herself look up and face him again.

He whirled on her. “Do ya _ever_ shut your fuckin’ trap.” Palpable rage crackled under his dark shell, but his voice never rose above that gravelly monotone.

“No, thought you knew that.” One hand met her hip; she tossed her braids with the other. It was almost a ritualized gesture now. She made herself put her hands down. “I got to tell you somefin really important, though.”

“Make it snappy.”

She resisted the urge to inform him that that could be construed as a pun under certain parameters. “Well… Jack… I’mma be honest with you.” She took a deep breath. “I’m gonna—”

Conveniently, she never got to finish her sentence. A loud crash came from the direction of the throne. Her head shot up, and in an instant she was bolting down the corridor, leaving Jack wholly in the dust. He ran after her, shouting obscenities. Bursting into the main hall, she skidded to a halt on the dark, smooth stone. Difficult, given the smears of blood that painted it.

The first thing that burst out of her mouth was:

“ _KRILL STEALER!_ ”

The rustblood—the dumb broad she hated—looked up from beneath the diamond edge of the Draconian Dignitary’s spear. Through her bloodied teeth she growled, “私はあなたに好意をやっています。” The Dignitary looked a little shabby—his chitin chipped, his immaculate duds ripped and scorched. And then lolling upon her throne lay the Black Queen’s corpse, her chest blown wide, the cooked-through ribbons of her shredded internal organs rolling from her open body cavity. The smoke had a familiar odor—a sort of necrotic scent she remembered from mere hours ago. (Was it strange that the first thought that occurred to her was that that throne would be a _bitch_ to clean off?)

The Dignitary’s eyes, expressionless and cold, met hers only briefly before he deemed her not worth his time (the gall!), and turned his attention to Noir. “Pity you were beaten to the punch,” he uttered in a dry tone.

“I noticed,” she and Jack answered in unison, though Jack was first to the charge. The rustblood struggled beneath the Dignitary’s spear. She managed to wriggle out from beneath him, and groped for her wands as Jack and the Dignitary clashed.

Jack was jabbing at the Dignitary relentlessly, though not getting many hits in. What kind of fool brings a knife to a spear fight? Well, that was just one of his many foibles. The Dignitary employed some fancy evasive footwork, and managed to get Jack backed up against the pillar. Through this, Meenah simply sat back and enjoyed the show. This, too, was a time-honored strategy—let the two NPCs beat each other to death. Convenient and remorse-free.

She wouldn’t be let off the hook so easily, though. The Dignitary spun his spear and slammed Jack in the solar plexus with the non-business end (for all his goddamn grandeur, the kind of scrub who went around carrying a spear with only _one_ business end was not the kind she wanted to associate with). He uttered a grunt and dropped. Then with Jack incapacitated, he turned and lunged straight for her.

“Oh no you don’t,” she barely had the chance to murmur before their weapons met. She raised her 2x3dent and caught his spear between its tines; with a deft twist she nearly wrenched it out of his grasp. Nearly. But he wouldn’t be disarmed so easily. In the turmoil her foot connected with his crotch. He didn’t flinch. Upon observation, he seemed to have not a damn thing down there... Dumb mistake. His foot lashed out in return, hooking around hers, and throwing her to the ground. The Dignitary was nothing if not efficient.

His spear raised above her. Time slowed—or seemed to—in the instant before it lowered for the strike. She was prepared to die. Not like it would do anything serious to her. She hadn’t betrayed Jack—yet—she hadn’t done anything unjustly. Had she?

It was a funny time to be reviewing one’s life’s deeds.

The spear halted in mid-air, and even the sound of her own pulse roaring in the back of her head got swept up and drowned in the deafening screech of the explosion. As before, the first thought that occurred to her was, _krill stealer._

Jack left no remains but a few charred flecks on the blackened floor. The rustblood left nothing but sooty footprints. She was on her feet at once, rage barreling through her veins. Krill stealing, _hacking_ bitch; she would pay, oh, she would pay.

The Dignitary sort of gaped, slack-jawed. He had his back turned to her. His bare head.

Know the weak spot and strike to kill. Best advice she’d ever been given. The seam where his cranial plate met his spine opened, exposing soft, vulnerable flesh.

She lunged, driving her trident’s prongs deep into that vulnerable spot. He spit up blood and crashed to the ground. She held her weapon there, edge nearly puncturing the floor, until he quit twitching.

It took him a damn long time to quit twitching.

♈

The rustblood’s footprints trailed out the rear end of the throne room; a trapdoor hidden in back led upward and out onto the rooftop. She breathed a little easier up here. The air was less stagnant. Colder.

She stalked along the rooftops. “I know you’re there, you krill stealin’ beach. C’mon out.” Her shoulders trembled with the sheer tension of it. She knew the dumb broad (the one she hated) was out here, even if she couldn’t be seen. She was probably using her leet temporal hax to evade her, or some such bullshit. Who even knew what was up with her, anyway? She’d been wholly off the rails and almost completely off the radar for perigees now—swallowed up in a destructive enigma, occasionally roaring back in in a blaze of fire to remind her old compatriots she was still alive and overpowered as ever. Then again, she didn’t know what she expected from the likes of her in the first place. Subtlety escaped her wholly.

She heard familiar, incomprehensible tones behind her: “私はここに。”

Meenah didn’t intend to dignify her by looking her in the eye.

“ろう者の雌犬。”

“Waterver, I can hear ya!” she snapped back. The dumb broad she hated said nothing, but she felt the impact of a mass of wet, clear saliva on the back of her neck. The bitch apparently thought that pun as lame as Meenah herself did. “Yeah, kay. I’ll give you that one. Get your ass down here so’s I can trash it properly; I ain’t coming up there. How the fuck’d you even get here?” She’d just been on her planet.

The rustblood sniffed. “私はあなたを伝えることができます。しかし、あなたは私の言っていることが理解できないだろう。私のクリトリスをなめる。それはあなたの時間が少なく無駄になります。”

“I’mma give you the benefit of the doubt an’ pretend you gave me a really awesome thoroughly-explained answer.” She shrugged, pushing herself back up onto her feet. This was another perk of godtier, quick recovery time. She rubbed the back of her neck, momentarily forgetting that there was spit on it. Her fingers came away wet and smelling vaguely of cannabis. She turned up her lip, turning to face the rustblood.

“私のペニスをしゃぶる。”

“Shore thing.” She was about ready to storm off and call the whole thing a bust. When she turned, she noticed—and had the good fortune not to trip on—a black chest that hadn’t been there a moment before. With the roof at an angle, it seemed precariously poised to slip. She noted maroon fingerprints around the lid, and this time she was savvy. “This is gonna be another head, ain’t it.”

The rustblood hopped down from her perch, her feet not even touching the cold, rough tile—merely gliding as she approached. She narrowed her sharklike eyes. “どう致しまして。”

That time, she knew damn well what had been said, but pretended not to. “It takes one to know one, beach.” She clicked the lid open, fully prepared to scoop up the contents and lob them at the rustblood’s face. Her fingers grasped something metallic, small for the chest that held it, and she realized she would probably be better off not tossing this at _anyone_.

It was a shiny piece of loot. But moreover, it was the object she had been striving to earn. She slipped the ring onto her finger, marveling at how neatly it sat there.

“You’re… givin’ me this?” She blinked up at the other girl. “You was on my side the whole time?”

Absolutely no answer from the stone-faced rustblood who now faced her.

Meenah’s subtle frown turned into a full-fledged scowl. She slipped the ring loose. “Well if you’s on my side then I know I went an’ fucked up. What’d I do wrong?”

“何もない。あなたは完全に私を務めてきた。”

“Uh… aight.” She supposed she had to say somefin. This, after all, was Damara surrendering the throne she’d rightfully earned to a second-rate successor. Second rate. She’d never been ‘second rate’ next to a fucking rustblood before, and it galled her—but now warranted decorum. She was, after all, a Queen. “Erm.” She coughed. “Watasea am very arigatoful.” It was her best effort to make peace. Who was she kidding, she couldn’t speak this moon language. “If you wanted me to be grateful the least you coulda done is not stole two a my hard earned kills.”

“あなたは、セッションの破壊に加担しています。これはあなたの報酬です。”

God dammit, now she was going off on one of her unintelligible tangents. “Sail that one by me again.” Meenah liked her more when she talked less, even if that meant she was potentially far more lethal.

Of course, it was like the dumb broad didn’t even hear. “あなたは女王と彼女のエージェントを殺した。あなたは彼らを殺していなかった場合。彼女の知恵はそうでなければあなたを助けている可能性があります。EXILEのガイダンスは、あなたの成功には重要でした。あなたは今一人でいる。あなたのセッションは、破綻します。”

“Yo, seariously, you gotta slow down if you want me to undersand what the hell you’s sayin’.” She recognized the sensation of a distinct throbbing in her temple—it felt like a bruise not properly healed.

The rustblood merely snorted at her. “あなたの治世をお楽しみください。空虚の女王。脂肪、ぐったりディック雌犬。” Clearly, the unintelligible loon could stand to dignify Meenah’s presence about as much as Meenah could stand to dignify hers, so after she uttered her final words, she turned and stalked off, vanishing off the roof into a black night writhing with tentacles and whispered woes.

When she left, distant Skaia’s light seemed to flicker—a barely noticeable glimmer against the bright light of the orbs above her, but enough that it caught her attention. She was a Derse dreamer—its light should have meant nothing to her. Yet somehow her whole body trembled in the flickering moment of its absence. Aranea, she remembered. Aranea was up there. She would do well to pester her—

Later, she decided abruptly. Later. A wild animal was battering against the cage of her ribs; she was breathing heavily, and she hadn’t noticed, but her feet felt surprisingly cold.

Her gaze lowered, and she stared out on the vast, monochrome, stone kingdom that stretched out before her. Her kingdom. It didn’t feel like hers, for she hadn’t even properly earned it. Even if her mission had, by technicality, gone off (mostly) without a hitch. Even if Damara had surrendered any claim to the throne to her. It did not feel _just_. She sat on the edge of the roof, playing with the gold ring in her hands, not having the heart to put it on.

It felt like a funny time to be reviewing one’s life’s deeds, but she had fallen into that habit lately. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? So why did she feel as if, somewhere along the line, something had gone horrifically wrong—something that this did little to set right? The end justified the means, didn’t it?

She breathed in; Damara’s stench, the reek of death, stayed behind long after she had gone. She looked like a fucking mess. There was soot on her clothes. It was Jack’s.

The problem with fantasy was that it often failed to mesh neatly with reality.

**Author's Note:**

> stricken by the sudden realization that I can't actually write action-oriented gen ahahahah
> 
> so I sort of fused two of my recip's prompts into a single concept which I acknowledge probably resulted in the story going in a nonsensical direction. tbh I feel like this story makes more sense in concept than in practice. I liked the idea of Meenah staging a single-handed (well, not exactly single-handed tbh) coup to install herself on the Dersite throne in her session, as a parallel to her post-Scratch self. (tho' in my headcanon she rules comfortably for like three weeks until she gets bored, dumps responsibility for it on Aranea and completely fails to give a fuck that it ever happened) I also like the idea of Meenah and Jack partnering up drawing explicit parallels between her and Karkat; she'd have made a better partner for him than Kankri at any rate. (tho wtf Jack is doing being so prominent in this story is beyond me. fucking Ladystuck how does it work.)
> 
> if you like you can think of this story as a bizarro paradox "getting the old gang back together" kinda deal. between the pre-Scratch Handmaid, the pre-Scratch Condesce, Sn0wman, all the members of the Midnight Crew, LE presumably tugging strings behind the scenes... all you're really missing is Doc Scratch and a bunch of expendable green torsos. maybe you can pretend they were the extras that all got slaughtered... idk, do whatever suits your fancy.
> 
> hope you found it somewhat enjoyable at any rate


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